To Businesses: Your Social Media Account Is Part of Your Customer Service
When a company pays to put an ad in our social media feed and turns off the comments, we notice. The business wants our attention, our clicks and our money, but it has already decided we can’t answer back on the post. Maybe it’s worried about what customers will say. Maybe it simply doesn’t want to hear from them. Either way, when a company goes out of its way to reach us and then closes the door on feedback, it can feel like disdain for the very people it’s trying to win over. The same problem shows up when comments are open and the company ignores them. A customer asks a straightforward question about the promotion. Another describes a bad experience. The brand responds to neither, then publishes another ad the next morning. You don’t have to answer every comment to run a good social media account, but someone should be there to answer reasonable questions, acknowledge complaints and follow through when they promise to help. If a company can’t staff the accounts it already runs, it should scale back its posting until it can keep up.
We saw a Dunkin’ ad promoting (below) its “Doomsday Menu,” a tie-in with the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday movie. The comments were turned off. What was Dunkin’ afraid people would talk about, the movie or the menu? Some customers might have made fun of the promotion. Others might have asked what was on the menu or said they were excited to try it. Turning off comments shut out all of them. If you’re paying to get people talking about your menu, you ought to be willing to hear what they have to say. As the old saying goes, if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Wawa posted (below) a tribute to a former CEO who had passed away. After 151 comments, the comments were turned off, leaving readers without a way to offer condolences or share a memory on the tribute itself. Whatever went into that decision, it shut out people who might have had something kind to say. A tribute is one of those rare moments when a company’s social media page can bring people together. In this case, the people reading it could only watch from the sidelines.
A post (below) we saw from Texas Roadhouse rubbed us the wrong way for a different reason. To us, it came across as openly mocking customers. A restaurant can have a sense of humor, and a good joke can make its account worth following. But when the people who come in and spend money are the punch line, the joke tells them something about how the brand sees them. We found it disrespectful, and we think customers are right to say so. By the way, as Star Trek fans, definitley didn't like the cartoon Captain Kirk being used this way.
A generic response is especially irritating when a customer has taken the time to explain exactly what happened. If someone says they waited 40 minutes for an order they never received, a polished message about how much the company values feedback can feel cheap. The customer can tell the difference between an answer that addresses the missing order and a stock reply that could have been sent to anyone. AI can help an employee sort through messages or put a response into clearer words. The employee still needs to understand what happened, decide what the company can do and take responsibility for the answer.
Businesses need to do better, and customers have a role in holding them to it. Ask the question. Share what happened. If a company responds and makes things right, give it credit. If it routinely ignores customers or makes fun of them, take that into account the next time you decide where to spend your money. How a company treats people after they speak up tells us more about its customer service than anything it says in an ad.
